


don't ask me for mercy

by aestheticisms (R_Vienna)



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Bad Future, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 16:02:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/R_Vienna/pseuds/aestheticisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucina smiles bitterly.</p><p>“You’re the only one I have let. Is it wrong for me to want to protect that?”</p><p>(gerome/lucina, and the mask that binds them. bad future.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't ask me for mercy

“My mask.”

He pushed the worn, black leather against her calloused hands, Falchion’s grip forever etched into her palm. “Take it.”

Lucina knows there’s more that he wants to say but Gerome is a dam that refuses to break.

“Okay.” She replies, because she too refuses to bend. The knight’s mask lay on the bridge of her nose, the fit is too perfect, too right. It falls into place like moon into night.

“For protection, for the future.” His hands brush against hers, callus rubbing against callus. Their fingers twine, he brings up their hands to his lips and ghosts promises of survival.

“I’m sorry.”

She’s not sure what she’s apologizing for. Who’s death was she grieving? Gerome does not answer, instead, he presses himself against her, taking her hands and placing them at his sides. Their foreheads touch, and Lucina pretends to not notice the trails of dried tears running down the pale of his face. She unlinks their hands and wraps her arms around his waist, and holds him tight. He stiffens, hesitates. His amethyst gaze flickers with something indiscernible and just as quickly, it fades.

The moment passes and he slams his lips against hers. His mask falls from Lucina’s face and lands on the floor without flourish or pomp. Lucina’s hands are in his blonde hair, pulling and tugging. Their bodies shift, looking for some sort of support in each other—they are an awkward tangle of limbs and heavy armor, until they are on the dirty floor with ragged breaths and bleeding lips. He tears off her cape, throwing the sapphire garment towards a crumbling wall, something that was at one point a house. Their armor is next to go, thrown away with a carelessness that would’ve made Kjelle go berserk. Their weapons went soon after.

For the daughter forsaken by a halidom and for the son entrusted to the last wyvern, they appear too broken, too unguarded. Gerome’s face burns, and the dark knight opens his mouth to say something, something important, she can tell by the way his breath hitches and his fingers tremble against the fabric of her breeches, but the princess of what once was Ylisse silences him with another ferocious kiss. Her teeth nick and bite, each bruise a testament to their relationship, distinct and marked by only one word: mine.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

Lucina does not have many things she can call hers. The last thing she remembers is having her life ripped away from her grasp. A lavish city capitol burning to the ground. Her father’s sword in her hand. Bloody hands, bloody heads. Disorientated, mad running through halls and screaming, screaming for her brother. Her father. Her mother.

“Lucina…”

Her mother’s blackened hand, her father’s open chest. The rumors. The screaming. The blood coming out in choppy bursts, the tome’s heavy fall, the breathless plea, the “ _run, run from here. and remember it’s not your fault._ ”

“Lucina?” A little more desperate. Gerome stops kissing her. His fingers frantically grab for her hands. Her hands are cold, clammy, paler than his. The girl is shaking, trembling in her royal garb, torn and tarnished by time and by Risen—oh gods,  _Lucina, look at me._

“Look at me, look at me,” His hands are on her face, he forces her to look at him, but she’s too far gone for a familiar spark of recognition to dance in her dark eyes.

She tastes blood in her mouth. Her mouth opens and closes and opens again, Gerome stares and  _stares_ , because Lucina is a queen of ice, and beauty, and composure.

Naga’s last champion lets out a scream, the tears she was fighting for so long, for so  _so long_ , glisten on her cheeks like stolen diamonds. She goes rigid in his embrace, and Gerome lets her cry. He pulls himself up, sitting against the old brick wall, taking Lucina with him. she curls into his chest, and the blond puts his chin on top of her blue head, gritting his teeth and trying not to break. He needed to be stronger. Lucina carried the weight of the world on her shoulders with her head held high, and he couldn’t carry a conversation with a wyvern without feeling his throat clench. He murmurs words that carry little significance into her hair, and she chokes out apologies in response.

When she stops shaking, she straightens herself out and pushes her bangs back, wiping away any residue of dirt or tears, any proof of her collapse disappear. Lucina bites down on her lower lip and does not meet Gerome’s unwavering gaze. He does not point this out, instead, he places a chaste kiss on her temple, and sighs.

He was really good at sighing.

“Lucy.”

The girl stifled a chuckle at the sound of her old pet name—hearing her stoic lover say it so tenderly, so gently, it was laughable in their apocalypse.

“I’m not letting you go alone.”

So this was what he wanted to say.

She stiffened, her lips twisted into a grimace, any levity his break in character brought was gone now. Lucina forced herself to look into his eyes. How long has it been since she’s seen his face? His mask still lay in the dirt, his final gift to her, discarded. There was a smoldering intensity in his obsidian gaze, it was suffocating.

She braced herself.

“Gerome, don’t be stupid. It’s too dangerous for both of us to go, you know magic, it’s cruel, unusual, and difficult—” he cuts her off with a tilt of his head, a knowing look and an arched brow.

“And it’d be better for you to go alone? Lucina, please. the martyr act benefits no one.” The heat of their earlier cavort was shooed out and replaced with a cold front, Gerome’s voice was icy and precise. “You will need our help.”

She can’t help but hear the unspoken “ _you can’t fight fate”_ in his spiel. Lucina knows when she cannot win a fight, but she does not yield.

“Then I’ll try again. and again. Until I get it right, without putting your lives in danger. I would rather die one hundred times before allowing yo— _the group_ to go.”

Lucina wished she kept the mask on.

She would do anything to hide the pathetic look on her face.

“Me. You’re worried about  _me.”_

Gerome stares at the girl in front of him, the exalt that once was and will be, was crying. Crying for  _him._ Gerome of no land in particular, because his mother was an exile and his father was an outcast, neither party too sure where to peg their loyalties. She was so much higher than him, she was worth more than the most precious of stones or metals, and _she_ was _crying_ for _him_. Disheveled and dispirited, her blue hair a windswept mess, her face streaked with grit and saltwater, her bruised and bandaged hands covering her grief-stricken gaze.

Lucina smiles bitterly.

“You’re the only one I have let. Is it wrong for me to want to protect that?”

Gerome hangs his head. He presses his hand against her cheek.

“I apologize.”

She opens her mouth.

Her words drift into the electric air, muddle with the stench of rotting bodies and firewood smoke.

They had a war to win. There wasn’t any room for compassion or mercy when there were lives to be saved.

He picks up his mask and puts it back on her face.

"We’ll go together."

For the future, he says.

They kiss before disappearing into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> GHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ok so i wrote fe13 fic and it's just been a long time since i've written anything so commentary would be fantastic! i love gerome/lucina so much aa just. such a great dynamic i love them so. in this fic lucina is the product of mu/chrom and gerome is cherche and henry's son but. that's not really important so ok bye anyway thanks for reading aaa


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